Saturday. August 7th. VI:15.

I missed Prayers this morning, not hearing either bell. I arose however in time to
attend recitation in Topography. After which I returned home and breakfasted. I had
no peculiar destination today, having some idea of going with Dwight upon a party
somewhere, which I gave up however as I saw he was not much inclined to receive me.
I spent an hour this morning at the reading room; the New York legislature have convened
and we shall now see what is the result. I suppose the Presidential question will
be fully settled at Albany in the course of the next week and one of two candidates
will obtain the thirty six votes of New York. Whoever does obtain them will get a
large helping hand to the chair. The senate have acted as they did last winter, the
House have also done their part so that the difference remains now to [be] settled and how it will be done, wiser heads than mine must determine. I shall wait
the result with patience. My father is undoubtedly the most popular man in New York.
But management has obtained a superiority there.1

I returned home and spent the morning quite indolently. I wrote my Journal, and amused
myself with Shakespear’s As you like it which delighted me most exceedingly. I was
more in humour to laugh at wit or at least at quibbles than I usually am, and this
play abounds in them. There are many sweet passages also. The soliloquies and observations
of Jaques are admirable, his character is beautifully hit off. I can read nothing
else this term, listlessness has made such inroads upon me that my habits of industry
are gone, and I know not whether they will come again in my College life.

The Boston Light Infantry passed through for Boston this afternoon appearing very
much the worse for their encampment. They have had a very pleasant time for it and
have enjoyed themselves very much in it. They are not remarkable for any thing however
except terrible dissipation. I then sat down to write my Journal and attempted to
do some thing besides but did not succeed. I was compelled to sleep an hour and a
half of the afternoon away and waste part of the rest. I can do nothing the remainder
of this term. Listlessness is upon me and I feel that I am to do nothing but laze
away the time. Luckily Brenan came in at about five and we talked away all the rest
of the evening. He visits me when he can find me at home in a leisure afternoon which
has been seldom of late. I like his conversation and company very much, he is a much
more agreable man alone than he is with company. I am amused at his sarcasm and feigned
severity of character. When he first came here, he was dissipated and had not the
means afforded him which he saw other young men from his part of the country had,
he therefore took it into his head to be melancholy and this affects him more I believe
at the present moment than it ought. I cannot help feeling for him as I know was I
in the same situation, I should be as weak. This, time should have blunted, and it
has somewhat. But still it somewhat throws a gloom over his character. We had some
conversation on indifferent topics, a little on Cunningham who is no favourite of
his. I do not think much of the man, but still I defend him from motives of party
spirit, in some measure, and from a liking of other parts of his character.

After Prayers Brenan took tea with us and I then walked as far as the bridge to Boston
with him. Here we had a scientific discussion of character, and a great deal of conversation
upon the subject of the party prejudices here, observations upon Miller, Hunt and
others and upon the affairs of the Porcellians. I then left him and came home but
as it was rather too early to go to bed, I sat down and read two articles in the last
Number of the Edinburgh review which I found at my { 279 } room when I returned. One was rather severe. The other was a light review of a fashionable
[ . . . ] of French Romances,2 one of which I read in a translation, but the sapient translator did not come to
the conclusion of the Edinburgh Review, that it was a satire. Retired early. X.